Harvard Course on Positive Psychology: Watch 30 Lectures from the University’s Extremely Popular Course

Several years back Tal Ben-Shahar taught a course on Positive Psychology at Harvard, which became, at least for a while, the most popular course at the university. About the course NPR wrote: “Twice a week, some 900 students attend Tal Ben-Shahar’s class on what he calls ‘how to get happy.’ … His class offers research from the relatively new field of positive psychology, which focuses on what makes people happy, rather than just their pathologies.”

Available in an admittedly grainy format, you can watch the 30 lectures from that course above, or over on YouTube. According to the original syllabus, topics discussed include “happiness, self-esteem, empathy, friendship, love, achievement, creativity, music, spirituality, and humor.”

If you’re interested in delving deeper into Positive Psychology, we’d recommend Tal Ben-Shahar’s books: Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment and Short Cuts to Happiness: Life-Changing Lessons from My Barber. The same goes for reading the works of Martin Seligman, the University of Pennsylvania professor who effectively invented the field. You can also take free courses on Positive Psychology. Just head over to our collection of Free Psychology Courses, a subset of our meta collection, 1,700 Free Online Courses from Top Universities.

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Related Content:

What Are the Keys to Happiness?: Take “The Science of Well-Being,” a Free Online Version of Yale’s Most Popular Course

Introduction to Psychology: A Free Course from Yale University

A Crash Course on Psychology: A 30-Part Video Series from Hank Green

All You Need is Love: The Keys to Happiness Revealed by a 75-Year Harvard Study


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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.